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 they would by force of numbers be more than a match for the enemy's more powerful but far fewer ships. The Venetians, as he would have heard, had lately transported some of their galleys from the river Adige to the lake of Garda; and if he was, as has been supposed, a student of ancient history, his imagination may have been fired by reading of a similar feat which had been accomplished by Augustus after the battle of Actium, and attempted by Hannibal at the siege of Tarentum. The only way in which the sultan's idea could be carried out would be by beginning the work from some point on the Bosporus north of the city. The road would have to be constructed behind the suburb of Pera, occupied by the Genoese. The thing, it was evident, would require the persevering co-operation of a vast multitude, but this Mahomet could command. The space to be traversed was about five miles of hilly wooded ground, and over this a passage for the ships was made, covered with planks that had been carefully greased with the fat of sheep and oxen. The arduous work of transport began, it seems, at Dolma-Baghtché, and ended on the top of the ridge by the cemetery of Pera, and thence down the slope a numerous flotilla was launched in the Golden Horn. There, in comparatively shallow water, the vessels were safe from attack from the huge Greek galleys, while they threatened the city in a new quarter. But the sultan's work was not yet finished. He had now a fleet and an army in the harbour's innermost recess, where the Greeks were particularly assailable, but it was still necessary to connect his ships with the